Last month, President Barack Obama ordered changes to the way that bulk telephony metadata is stored—specifically, he said that the National Security Agency should no longer be the custodian of that data. He called for either the private sector or another non-governmental third party to hold it. Further, he ordered that searches of that data must be limited to two hops from a person of interest rather than three.

In order to implement these changes, the Department of Justice filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—the controversial secret court that oversees intelligence operations—to implement these changes. That motion, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was granted by the FISC late Thursday night.

However, the revised motions and new FISC orders are not yet public—they won't be published until after a declassification review, scheduled for February 17, 2014.

“The challenge is getting the details right, and that is not simple," Obama said in January 2014, citing the need to balance security against the risk of government intrusion. "I would not be where I am today were it not for the courage of dissidents like Dr. King, who were spied upon by their own government,” he noted, referring to mid-20th century American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “And as president, a president who looks at intelligence every morning, I can’t help but be reminded that America must be vigilant in the face of threats.”